With the opening of his first
restaurant in New York City, Queer Eye's food and wine guy
Antoni Porowski says that he's never wanted to have a restaurant
until recently.
According to The New York Times,
Porowski and his partners, restaurateurs Lisle Richards and Eric
Marx, will open their reimagined Village Den in the West Village on
Monday.
“The cafe serves breakfast (avocado
tartine, almond and walnut pancakes), salads (almond Caesar; grilled
chicken with spinach, egg and green goddess dressing), bowls
(honey-roasted turkey meatballs over cauliflower rice), and a long
list of smoothie options,” the
Times
wrote.
Speaking with Eater, Porowski
explained how he got involved with the project.
“We have this thing called 'work-out
club,'” Porowski said. “There’s a group of seven or eight of
us in LA and New York, and whenever we’re all in New York together,
we just go work out. And we would always go to the Wayfarer, which is
Lisle and Eric’s restaurant uptown. It’s more decadent eating
there, but then we’d basically ask the chefs to do like a grilled
fish with roasted Brussels sprouts, or fibrous veggies with a poached
egg or something. And we decided it would be great to have a place
with food we really love that makes you feel good after eating it,
and you don’t, like, fall into a carb coma.”
He also said that he never wanted to
have a restaurant.
“The truth is that it has not been my
pipe dream to have a restaurant,” he said. “I know
restaurateurs, and the amount of work that goes into a restaurant is
nothing short of insanity. It's a real commitment, and most
restaurants don't make it, so the odds are really against you.”
“What’s great about [Eric and
Lisle] is that they have such a strong background in running
restaurants. They know what operations are like, whereas with me, I
just came in for menu development, and I came in as a home cook. So
there’s been a lot of guidance along the way with editing and
making it more concise and restaurant-friendly,” Porowski
added.